When Anna Loring wrote this letter she was still reeling from the death of her beloved husband, Rob, who had died in Asheville, North Carolina in April. Shortly after Cairine had visited her there, Anna wrote a moving testimony of the sisters’ love for each other.
How kind everyone has been to me in this sad time, and you especially my dear sister. I can never forget it — your coming to me without a moment’s notice, & leaving all those little children behind. I did not say much but you must know how deeply I appreciated your attention. I feel too that there is a perfect understanding existing between us and that there never will be any change. Rob was so fond of you and so disappointed that you were not able to come to Asheville this winter...20
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When the Wilsons took up residence in Ottawa, it was a small, parochial capital with a population of approximately 110,000. Long gone were the days when it was a lusty, brawling lumbertown. All too visible, however, were such reminders of its lumbering heritage as the screeching sawmills and giant piles of wood that dotted the LeBreton Flats area, just west of Parliament Hill, and the hodgepodge of mills that straggled across nearby Victoria Island and the bank of the Ottawa River. Further east, the skyline was dominated by the copper-sheaved towers and turrets of the East Block and the famous Chateau Laurier Hotel, which had opened for business in 1912. Parliament Hill, far from being a scene of order and beauty, was strewn with men, building materials and equipment as work proceeded on the rebuilding of the Centre Block, razed by fire on the night of 3 February 1916.
Nineteen-eighteen was a noteworthy year not only for Cairine Wilson but also for her fellow Ottawans. That autumn the worldwide influenza epidemic swept through the city, forcing the closure of schools, churches, theatres, pool halls and laundries. At the height of the outbreak — the last week of September and the first half of October — 520 residents died of influenza and pneumonia. No sooner had the epidemic abated than news of Kaiser Wilhelm’s abdication reached the city. As soon as the power companies conveyed the glad tidings to the local citizenry by a prearranged signal, people rushed into the streets, clutching flags and noise-makers. Two days later, on the 11 November, the capital became the first city in Canada to learn of the Armistice and once again joyful crowds poured into the streets, this time to form into parades where they blew horns and surged around gaily decorated cars.21
Notwithstanding these developments, Ottawa was normally a quiet, sedate capital with the feel and atmosphere of an Ontario town. Although the Great War had resulted in an expansion of the civil service, the business of government had yet to engulf the community’s basic forest industry. Lumber magnates and their descendants were well represented in the tiny Ottawa establishment, where everybody knew everybody else and much time was devoted to the assiduous study of relationships among the top members. What counted most in this hothouse society was not money but family pedigree and occupation. Like Montreal’s English-speaking establishment, Ottawa society was highly stratified, with a social pecking order that ranked doctors above dentists and placed retail merchants and men engaged in trade—unless they were well educated and wealthy — on the lower rungs of the social ladder. For the Wilsons and other members of this aristocracy, life was gracious living par excellence with a surfeit of thé dansants, intimate dinner parties in private homes, dances at the exclusive Country Club and the Royal Ottawa Golf Glub, afternoon teas and receptions and functions at Government House. For debutantes, there was also the opportunity to be presented to the viceregal couple of the day at one of the Drawing Rooms, held in the ornate red and gold Senate Chamber.22 Such was the “Old Ottawa” that the Wilsons came to know well after they left Rockland.
Before moving into the Manor House in 1930, the family lived in Ottawa’s Sandy Hill, then a prestigious residential district, noted for its large stately houses, many of which had adjoining stables and generous gardens. One of the most impressive of these was the home that Cairine and Norman Wilson rented in 1918 from Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada before he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec in the autumn of 1918. A handsome, two-storey building with graceful lines and a gothic roof, it stood at 240 Daly, near the corner of Friel and just a few blocks east of Laurier House.
The family lived at 240 Daly for two years, during which time not only was Anna Margaret born, but also Angus Mackay named after Cairine Wilson’s favourite brother (16 March 1920). Children continued to arrive after the family’s move to 192 Daly, which the Wilsons bought in 1920. On 11 November 1922, Robert Loring was born, followed by Norma Francis on 1 August 1925. With Norma’s arrival, at Clibrig, the family was at last complete. Cairine Wilson’s cherished dream of having several children had been amply fufilled. In an ironic twist of fate, however, she would spend less time with her offspring, particularly the “second family,” as she called it (the four youngest children) than her warm, fun-loving husband. Indeed, because of their mother’s increasing involvement with the community, the younger Wilsons saw very little of her when they were growing up. Because of this and her great reserve, they never came to know her well, at least not until they were adults, and in some cases parents. As a result, this thoughtful, compassionate, but undemonstrative, woman sometimes elicited feelings of intimidation rather than love. Norma Davies, for example, recalls that when she was twelve she was “terrified” by the prospect of having to converse at length with her mother on a long train trip to St Andrews-by-the-Sea.23
However, if she intimidated some of her children, such as Norma and Olive, she earned only respect and affection from four long-serving family retainers. These appeared on the scene in the 1920s when the Wilsons lived in the large red-brick house at 192 Daly. Central to the household was Martha Hemsley, the cook, who arrived in Canada with the Governor-General and Viscountess Willingdon. Except for a seven-year absence, she served Mrs Wilson until the Senator’s death in 1962. Another key figure was George Betts, the butler, who arrived in 1922 from the United Kingdom where he had been trained as a footman. Amusing and loyal, he had a reputation for being the best diplomat in Ottawa. Before Cairine Wilson went out to a luncheon one day, Betts intoned, “Nobody else will have the courage to tell you, but you have a run in your stocking, Ma’am.”24 Equally indispensable was the chauffeur, Clifford Daz6, noted for his good humour and accommodating ways. There was also the English nanny, Eva Baker, who raised Norma. She entered the household in 1924 and died in 1971 while still serving the family.
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When the Wilsons moved to Ottawa in 1918, Cairine Wilson was in her thirties, for many people a significant period of passage and redefinition of goals. These years were no less decisive for Mrs Wilson, who, at some point in her early thirties, was jolted into the jarring realization that, for her, at any rate, life should involve more than marriage and raising children. She alluded to this when she wrote in the Canadian Home Journal in 1931:
To many modern women who claim the right of selfexpression and desire to lead their own lives, my early experiences would not appeal. Almost last of a large family, I was accustomed to being suppressed through my childhood and young womanhood which did not help to overcome a great natural timidity.
My marriage brought great happiness, but deprived me of practically all outside companionship and for ten years I devoted myself so exclusively to the management of three houses and the care of my children that a blunt doctor finally brought me up with a start. Never had he seen a person deteriorate mentally as I had, he told me, and from an intelligent girl I had become a most uninteresting individual. I have been grateful since that date for his frank words, for it caused me to realize that the work which I had always considered was my duty was not sufficient. At once I made a determined effort not to merit such a consideration and have endeavoured to keep alert.25
Since no clues are given to the